Sarah Hedgecock

Police Chief David O. Brown of Dallas showed off his crazy tech skills recently by publicly disciplining employees on Twitter, with more detailed accounts of their indiscretions on a complementary Facebook page. We are truly living the future.

The posts, which were written at the end of the year, were picked up by Vocativ just last week, because savvy social media users can't stay underground forever. In a series of 14 tweets on December 30, Brown listed the names, transgressions, and fates (demotion or termination) of five police officers and a 911 dispatcher.

I have terminated SC Frank Della for public intoxication, damaging a person's property, and making offensive contact with a person.

Each firing/demotion was followed by the reminder about appeals. And in case that public shaming wasn't enough, extremely detailed descriptions of each incident are listed in a note on the Dallas Police Department Facebook page.

Apparently these kinds of posts aren't unusual for Brown: according to Vocativ, this is how he fired 27 employees in 2013. Despite criticism of his use of full names and apparent guilty-until-the-appeal attitude, Brown hasn't backpedaled.

Although the unorthodox use of Twitter and Facebook isn't a policy of the department, Brown has said (on Twitter, of course) that "transparency motivated us to engage the public on social media." No word on whether transparency will motivate the future creation of a Dallas PD Snapchat account.